I am pretty odd to start with

I have been alone far too long and am beginning to become even more odd than normal.  This will be of some concern to those who know me, as I am pretty odd to start with.  Yesterday I jumped on any bus and travelled as far as it went.  Got off at a village and walked and walked until I grew tired and found a bus stop.  The time schedule showed that the bus would come in 45 minutes.  It is a given fact that I am unable to wait at bustops.  I’m not sure what it is that gets to me about waiting below those signs.  It occurs to me that these 45 minutes will never be returned to me but are totally wasted.  Suddenly, life seems short enough without the loss of these 45 minutes.  As usual, I cannot wait and proceed to walk to Rabat, a good 3.5 kms away instead.  

Today I jumped another bus this time to a place called the Golden Bay on Malta.  It has a secluded sandy beach on the far side of the island.  After ages the bus drops me off and instead of enjoying the beach I go to the Radisson Hotel and eat at the Mokka a ridiculously expensive restaurant on a balcony overlooking the bay.  It had been rated quite high on trip advisor.  I had the cheapest thing on the menu Ceasar Salad and water.  It came after a huge delay and it is the first time I had this salad without chicken and without crotons.  As you might suspect without these it becomes lettuce and cheese.  In fact it resembled a child’s idea of making a cheese sandwich with lettuce instead of bread.  It is far too posh a place to complain and even when they charge 5.50 euros for a bottle of water I have to act as if that is fine instead of tearing my hair out and screaming – “what a rip off!”  

On the way back by bus I kept falling asleep.  For some reason, when asleep, my leg would slip forward and kick a very dignified Maltese white haired gentleman.  I would wake up and apologise and then fall asleep again and do the same thing.  He was very gracious and when I said how sorry I was he just smiled and waved his hand dismissively.  I proceeded to kick him five times on that journey but his good nature never wavered.  Got home and went straight to bed and sleep an hour – talk about exhausted.  

Yesterday I noticed I had begun to talk to myself.  Not long speeches but short invigorating comments – like “you can do this”, or “never mind, another day!”  But today, I noticed my talking to myself has become much more convoluted.  Long segments of a good talking to, the kind of thing you would say to a demented aunt who has pushed you beyond your limits.  This I have to admit is not a good sign.  Rather worrisome, I think.  Even worse, there is no one to notice.  Three weeks of being alone has done something to my brain and not a good thing.  Thank goodness incoming troops are arriving on Tuesday.  I do hope I have not reached an even worse state by then, my visitors may not even get a word in.  I could be giving parliamentary-like addresses for hours by that stage!

For the disembowelled among us

There is no room for judgemental speeches when someone commits suicide.  The loss is too great to address and it has been accurately referred to as “the scar that will not heal”.  Every person’s death diminishes us and we need to use each as a spur to all of us to do more to help not as a conversation piece.

Ten million people attempt suicide each year and one million succeed. A disproportionate number are young people.  These figures do not even come close to exposing the agony and pain that hides behind those statistics.

The loss of a young life just beginning screams its wrongness.  Too often the necessary investigations inflict more anguish on already lacerated hearts.  Those who end their own lives do so not because they choose to die but usually because living is no longer a viable option.  We cannot imagine what is going on in the mind of a tormented soul but their anguish should call out to all of us.

We need to ensure support, professional, competent and timely is available for those who are at the very end of their tether.  This lifeline should be strengthened if it is the final barrier between a person and that deadly last step.  It cannot be amateur, incompetent or ill informed.  It needs to be constantly evaluated and improved.  While suicide preventative resources are limited and often under developed there are well-established suicide prevention programmes worldwide that have shown themselves effective in reducing the number of suicides.  Prevention is always a challenge but by using resources available and learning from good practice we can get better.  

While attending a suicide prevention programme in Londonderry, N. Ireland some years ago I was impressed that the speakers spoke with passion and insight.  They seemed to know what they were talking about and conveyed compassion and guidance that made practical sense.  It was only during the coffee break I learned that all of the trainers had lost family members through suicide.  Their experiences gave their words a depth of understanding and poignancy that touched all exposed to it.  They clearly got over the principle that that “suicide is everyone’s business”.  Channels need to be opened to those in despair and each of us can play a role.

Too many live among us, mortally injured, but having to hide their weeping wounds.  In addition to their growing pain they muster up the charade that all is well.  The reasons are manifold but one is the knowledge that fellow humans thrive on gossip, backbiting and the tragedy of others.  Going over the bones of carcasses, pulling apart the sinews to see wounds more clearly.  Delighting to satisfy their morbid curiosity and share with others new titbits found.  Our newspapers and neighbourhoods are full of such judgemental spouting.  No wonder then, the disembowelled among us seek no help but hug their intestines to their chest and hope no one senses their despair and agony.

"regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep ..aloof from its dominion, inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul."

(Baha'i Writings)

Ewald - Knight of Justice of the Order of St John

Generally, I am not keen on political types.  Having long been of the persuasion that by the time an individual has been elected they invariably have unencumbered themselves of basic human morals.  Ewald Von Kleist-Schmenzin was a lawyer and a conservative politician in what was then Germany but which is now part of Poland.  He was from a distinguished family (2 Field Marshalls etc) and was virulently anti-Nazi even before Hitler came to power in 1933.  He stubbornly refused to fly the Nazi flag from his castle (Schloss Schmenzin) and the only insignia he embraced was the white Maltese cross of the Order of St John.  He was made a Knight of Justice of this order in 1935. 

Schloss Schenzin

After Hitler came to power a refusal to offer the German greeting (Heil Hitler) could cost you your life.  Even an ambiguous remark like “The war was not going well” could be interpreted as opposition behaviour and lead to dire consequences.  Not contributing to a Nazi fund drive was another easy way to be identified as disloyal to the Führer.  So when in 1933 a Nazi Party District leader visited Ewald he must have been rather flummoxed  by Ewald’s emphatic responses, that

1. he was indeed an enemy of the Nazi Party
2. he would never say Heil Hitler
3. he would always refuse to fly the Nazi flag over his castle, Schloss Schmenzin
4. and finally that he would give nothing to the Nazi party not even ten pennies!

Tack was not his strong point.  He held to his loathing and hatred of the Nazi party for ten years during which fear made good men compromise their principles.  In 1944 his son was asked to take part in a suicide attempt on Hitler’s life.  Hesitating on the implications of this mission the son turned to his father almost hoping that his father would object.  Ewald responded with a short silence and then said this memorable line to his son,

Ewald's son

“A man who doesn’t take such a chance will never again be happy in life.”

His son actually twice agreed to carry explosives to detonate near Hitler but both plots failed.  When a briefcase exploded near Hitler in another attempt the consequences were severe and the very next day Ewald was arrested.  He was tried in the Peoples Court by Roland Freisler.

Ronald Freisler

Freisler chaired the First Senate of the People's Court, and acted as judge, jury and prosecution in these show trials.  90% of all these proceedings ended with sentences of death or life imprisonment, the sentences frequently having been determined before the trial.  Freisler introduced the concept of 'precocious juvenile criminal' in the "Juvenile Felons Decree". This decree "provided the legal basis for imposing the death penalty and penitentiary terms on juveniles for the first time in German legal history.

 Over a period of a few short years Fresier’s court resulted in 5000 executions including 72 juveniles (one 16 year old boy was executed for handing out anti-fascist texts).  In the court facing Freisler’s questions Ewald was as blunt and belligerent as usual and was in no way intimidated by the proceedings.  He announced

“Yes, I have pursued high treason since 30 Jan 1933 always and with every means.  I made no secret of my struggle against Hitler and National Socialism.  I regard this struggle as a commandment from God.  God alone will be my judge.”

It was a very timely comment.  An American bomb flattened the courthouse, halting proceedings and killing Freisler. 

Despite this seemingly divine intervention Ewald was nevertheless guillotined at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin on 9 April 1945 (69 years ago exactly to this day) — one month before the end of the war.  Ewald did not go quietly into that dark night and his words written shortly before his execution echo yet.

Schloss Schenzin

“We believe that faith in God and obedience to His Word must permeate our public life…..Who is the greater, who has achieved more for humanity, Caesar, or a simple, conscientious genuine working man, whose whole life has been an example of faith? I think it is the working man.”

PS In March 2013 Ewald's son died at the age of 90 having amazingly survived the war.

Owl Puke

Well it has been a week of discoveries!

For example today I was rounding up my two-week science teaching of middle school lab work with a video of the barn owl.  We have been covering body systems and had started with the skeleton.  Much making of full sized black cardboard skeletons with labelled bones tied together with wool or paperclips.  In fact my entire science lab resembles a bizarre Hallowen celebration with many of the black shapes running on the walls, spread-eagled on corridors or waving frantically from a board in the classroom.  We then moved on to dissecting an owl pellet.  It was tricky justifying the expense of purchase of owl vomit in these economically challenging times, but I got it.  As owls cannot digest the bones, feathers and fur of their prey they vomit it up in these pellets so I reckoned that would be a creative way to allow them to pull all the bones out and reconstruct the victims of the owl.  Various parts of rodents, voles, birds, shrews etc were all carefully extracted from these solid lumps and then separated out into piles of each respective animal.  The lab echoed to excited cries of  “I’ve got a skull here!”, or “This is a pelvis of a rat” and they grew expert at identifying shrew skulls because the tips of their teeth are red.  Tweezers and heads bent over dead piles of bones has been our points of interest for some time and now all bones have been stuck on black card board and identified.  The corridors have been full of conversations like, “what did you find in your owl puke?”  After all these experiences I decided to close the topic with a series of videos showing owls vomiting up their owl pellets, in flight catching prey and finally one of an owl swallowing a huge rat.  So it was with complete despair, while watching them, I heard a group of students crying out, “that is so gross, what is that lump coming out of its mouth?” or comments to that effect.  At which point, several of the brighter students turned and exasperatedly pointed out that we had been dissecting owl pellets all week and of course that was what these were.  Several students looked green around the gills that they had been rummaging around in these horrid looking turds and were outraged.  At this point all my satisfaction about my lesson plans and lab work drained away.  I should have remembered when you take kids into labs a part of their brains switches off and goes into a sort of “Bunsen burner, test-tube, chemical, mesmerised state” that closes down all rational thought.  If I entered the lab and began a strange witch doctor ritual with feathers and skinned rabbits around my head it would make no difference.  You can tell, when they approach you in the lab and ask, “can we blow something up next week?”  Everything but explosions to sixth grade is a complete waste of a lab session.  Here is the owl video, be patient – it is taken by amateurs discussing their camera storage capacity.

But for me the most beautiful part is watching these birds in flight – this is 6 minutes long so don’t feel you have to watch it but there is something angelic about their flight in slow motion that grabs me.  Okay the last part is fairly gross!

It is all a learning experience.  From the sublime to the ridiculous, this life.  One minute you think you are running exciting educational science experiments the next you realize it really is just all vomit.  There is a metaphor about life in that last line.  Education is just about regurgitating stuff and life usually involves vomit for some reason!

Sometimes we make shit happen

There are dates that really stick in the mind.  Take 1844, in that year the blight that decimated the potato crop in Ireland arrived and one million people would die as a result.  Such times deserve closer inspection because they often signal a sea change.  Just as for all of us there are years that we remember for all sorts of emotional/practical reasons.  Ask anyone and they can usually site their own year to remember, often for catastrophic reasons.  The year everything went pear shaped.  So, I was fascinated to read of the history of the Great Auk.  The original penguin was originally so numerous that Iceland and Newfoundland were packed with these flightless birds.  Then humans got stuck in and used them for meat and mattress stuffing as pointed out in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

“You do not give yourself the trouble of killing them, reported an English sailor, “but lay hold of one and pluck the best …. You then turn the poor penguins adrift, with his skin half naked and torn off to perish at his leisure.”

It was June 1844 when the last of this unfortunate species was strangled by Icelandic hunters.  A sorry end to a once abundant species.  Of course we’ve been here before.  The Dodo’s are portrayed almost as a humorous creature deserving of extinction.  If you are careless enough to forget how to fly – you really deserve everything that comes to you, seems to be the bottom line.

But even those who fly are being wiped out.  Last year the usual millions of monarch butterflies that return to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico every year for the first time in living memory did not appear on the 1^st November as usual.  Traditionally the butterflies are thought to be the souls of the dead returned and Mexicans celebrate it as a holy Day ‘The Day of the Dead’.  In 2012 there was concern when only 60 million of the butterflies eventually turned up.  By the end of Nov 2013 only three million arrived.  The spectacular migration, many think, could be approaching collapse.

The causes are human ignorance.  We cannot blame Icelandic hunters or cruel mid nineteen century sailors.  No, it is due to the way we choose to farm, ploughing every scrap of earth, the use of Roundup a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except the genetically modified to survive it.  Millions of acres of native species, especially Milkweed have been wiped out.  In one study Iowa was shown to have lost 60% of its milkweed and then another study depressingly claimed 90% was actually gone.  We have sterilized our agriculture landscape.  So what I hear some ask?  Well, 80% of our food crops are pollinated by insects primarily bees.  They like butterflies are in trouble.  The intricate food web that connects life forms on this planet is being ripped apart.  The intricacies of interdependence that we are only beginning to understand and wonder at, is being destroyed at a frighteningly wanton rate.

Some Monarchs finding themselves parasite laden, turn to more toxic types of milkweed which helps kill their unwelcome guests.  Bees have long used resins from aspen and willow trees to line their nests and these anti fungal, anti-microbial and antiviral substances help them fight infection and diseases.  Such wonders of nature are being treated with cavalier indifference and ruthless expediency.  When you insist on a nice green lawn you’ve created an insect desert.  Have a front yard with a wildflower meadow and the same area can accommodate 20/30 species of bees and butterflies.

But unfortunately it doesn’t stop at flightless birds and insects.  By recent estimation one third of reef corals, one third of freshwater molluscs, one third of sharks, a fifth of all reptiles, a quarter of all mammals and a sixth of all birds will be like the Great Auk, extinct this century. 

The last great extinction (the fifth) happened 66 million years ago.  It has been entitled with no exaggeration ‘The worst day ever on planet Earth’ and three quarters of all known species were wiped out. 

However, in truth, an even worse extinction happened 252 million years ago when 96% of all marine species, 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates and the only mass extinction of insects ever to have occurred.  In fact, it took life on our planet 10 million years to recover.  Extinctions do happen, they may be many millenniums apart but they are a feature of our planet.  One 450 million years ago was due to the movement of the earth’s plates into the southern pole region which caused global cooling and mass extinction.  Another extinction was caused by a collision of an asteroid.  I suppose the accurate summary here is, shit happens. 

It is no comfort to note that present extinctions are not something that has happened to us by chance or fate but by our own hands.  I suppose the truthful summary here is – sometimes we make shit happen.

Fast Dreams

Into the new day

From the dark night

Thoughts rise to you

Steel endeavours to obey

Urges heart to love

Clear the fog of indecision

From the path ahead

Allow the channels

Of inspiration to flow

Through this muddy

Waste pipe of life.

I stumble and fall

Far from where I am meant to be

Crawling ungainly over rough ground

Head low not high

Soaring over earthly business

Demeaned by apathies and appetites

Bemoaned by celestial forces

Unsure, hesitating

Sword sheathed.

While the battle rages

Fighting whimpering inner foes

Instead of the enemies without

That rob us of our birthright

Dreams of fear

Loved one covered in sores

Raw and pus filled

Missing parts of limbs

Melted my heart with horror

“Oh My dear one!”

I cry out in pity and pain

But he looked at me with such

Sweet long suffering

As if to say,

You only have to look

Imagine how it is for me!

And then tried to cheer me

Glad to be awoken from such a dream

Searching for a better me

Among the ruins of existence

Trying to clear a path

Remember the reason for this life

A glimpse of light ahead

Reminds me of a purpose

Long forgotten amidst

The futile business of life

Dreamt of a relative giving me tea

Special healing infusion

That strengthened

The elixir handed out so generously

So typical of her sweet nature

We were on a mountain slope

With epic journeys to be tackled

Her kindness anchored goodness in me

I awake to find it time to rise

My dreams and this world

Are fraying and meeting

At the unfolding edges

Each night another thread of the tale

Leads me on.

Awoke this morning

Another dream fresh

I scramble to remember

But it has evaporated

Like joy and pain

All things pass

Shadows on the cave wall

From the fire reflecting

The real life outside

Into this valley of darkness

I awake to the lack of light

Aware that just behind the veil

Lies everything worthy.

4000 corpse better looking than us

My husband worked in China for a year lecturing in the University of Urumchi.  If your geography is as weak as mine, let me explain that Urumchi is in the west of China, below Mongolia and above Tibet.  It also has the rather dubious distinction of being, on our planet, the city furthest away from the sea. See: furthest from sea calculations 

I spent a month in Urumchi visiting my husband who lived on the campus of the university.  From the moment I entered the departure lounge in Beijing for Urumchi departures I felt I was the only westerner in the whole building.  My foreignness proclaimed by my blondness in a sea of dark hair.  Its amazing what you notice when you feel you are the only foreigner.  Suddenly, your senses heighten, you become more alert.  You are aware you stand out and that vulnerability brings out older hunter-gatherer instincts.  A similar feeling was experienced in one of the National Parks in the States when I was walking through a forest late at night after an eloquent talk in the nearby lodge on the bears that frequent these very woods.  The audience of campers nearly all claimed to have seen grizzles/brown bears galore during their stay.  While returning to my campervan I found in the silence of the dark woods all my senses on full alert for the snap of a twig, the rustle of the undergrowth or the grunt of an angry bear.  I was a foreigner who had strayed into dangerous zones unwittingly.

Once the plane landed in Urumchi I noticed that many of its inhabitants looked more Persian than Chinese.  In fact, my husband was by now accustomed to being assumed to be an Urgur by street traders who refused to believe he did not speak their language.  He has suffered the same fate in Greece and other parts of the world.  I always blamed Alexander the Great, who in conquering so much of the ancient world managed to mess up its proper genealogy.  Little did I realize this situation predated even the ancient Greeks by several millennium.

I really enjoyed the campus routine.  Early morning the elderly would gather on the beautiful green grounds and in the dawn fifty or so would do Tai Chi exercises with meditative slowness as the sun rose behind them.  Chinese students worked diligently and treated staff with exaggerated respect.  The campus official at the gate would salute lecturers as they entered adding to the formality.  These students worked from morning to 10pm at night.  Their day filled with activities including dancing, choir singing, sports and outing in Gers, peculiar nomad tents erected on the mountain lake shores.  Learning was taken extremely seriously.  The peer group message was if you weren’t working as hard as everyone else you were betraying your parents’ investment in your education.  Once a month the entire student body downed pens and spent the day cleaning the university buildings and grounds.  Desks were scrubbed/sanded, gardens weeded, windows shined etc.  I thought it a remarkably clever way to reduce graffiti/vandalism.  After all, if you knew you would have to remove/fix such writing/damage it would be like aversion therapy.  On every corner there were plagues with statements from Confucius none of which anyone could argue with.  Here are some of his words – I hope you feel as inspired by them as I do.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

One of the Urgur students was from an area on the border with Mongolia and her father worked with the wild horses which they all rode bareback.  Talk about a different life.  Here the Chinese rule about one child families does not hold and all came from large extended families.  Their manners were impeccable and kindness consistent.

While staying in the city I went round the museum.  Along with fascinating artefacts explaining the many indigenous tribes that make up this part of China there was also a room full of mummies.  These mummies were blond and red haired with European features.  They had intricately woven clothes and elegant footwear.  Most had headgear that resembled cone shaped magician hats.  The most startling thing was that some were over 4000 years old.  This was no trading party passing along the Silk Road, after all the Silk Road did not exist until the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).  More bodies were found in the remote Taklamakan desert and even early Bronze age settlements.  These tall blond/red haired Europeans had been perfectly preserved.  They had not been subjected to the brutal Egyptian brain out of the nose treatment with organs packaged nearby.  No, these blond ones, like the “Charchan man” who was six foot six inches tall had all their organs intact.  Their bodies had been preserved by the environment – salt/arid/dry conditions and by the skill of those that buried them.  Live oxen in some cases were slaughtered at the site and their wet skins used to wrap the coffins.  Once dried the hides were as tight as a drum sealing them from even one speck of sand.  Others were laid out in holes on hand made bricks with wood and sand above a space allowing air to circulate and in effect freeze drying the bodies. Oils were rubbed on to conserve the skin.  Such skill was not limited to their funeral crafts.  They had fine leather boots, woven clothes of usual precision.  Some even showed evidence of having undergone operations with neat incisions made in accordance with instructions found in later ancient Chinese texts.  They had wheeled carts, rode horses, made pottery and had knives and arrowheads.  One woman was buried alongside ephedra branches (a mildly psychoactive medicinal plant -  "herbal ecstasy.") which, if taken, could have eased the process of death.

It was strangely disheartening to wander around the 4000-year-old “Beauty of Loulan” who, with her long blond braids and fine bone structure and skin, was far more beautiful than all the many visitors that showed up that day.  It is an unsettling experience to be outshone by a 4000-year corpse!

It is now clear these Europeans were actually living in the Xinjang region of China and that they probably originated from eastern Europe Mesolithic or Neolithic cultures.  You do have to feel sorry for the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman who in 1934 explored the Xiaohe cemetery in the Taklimakan desert and reported his findings excitedly in 1939.   Who could have predicted that World War 2 would come along and subsequently China would be closed to foreigners.  Incredibly, It was not until the year 2000 when the Xinjing Archealogical Institute claimed to have “discovered it” the whole mystery re-emerged.  How frustrating for Bergman to stumble on such a find only to have it taken away from the world for 60 odd years.

What is even more amazing is that these blond/red haired European foreigners lived and survived in this far-flung part of the world so many millennium ago and became part of the complicated genetic crossroads that make up this corner of China.